My father's desk

An innocent visit to Dad's rolltop on July 4th turned into a memory wormhole...

My dad died in June, 2011. He was 80.

Many of you know the pain of having to deal with your parent’s personal effects, and, like many of you, probably, I put off looking at a lot of his things.

I kept almost none of his clothes, a few hunting hats (he was Jones Cap man, always), a tie or two, and I threw the rest of them out. I kept two vests (Eddie Bauer goosedown). I have a few worn blue towels that still smell like him. I have his rifles, pistols and shotguns. I have his grandmother’s rocking chair, and the other day my thoughtful brother picked up a loveseat our grandfather built from a Ford rumbleseat (srsly.). One of my aunt’s friends in Minnesota had it, 22 years after my aunt died in 2002. I have some small pieces of Dad’s art, one of which I hung in my new study today.

Of course, I pulled out a lot of small items and displayed them around my house. His Mitchell 300 spinning reel. My grandfather Al’s stamp box. Dad’s compass. In fact, in the hours leading to his death, I put the compass in his hand, in case he needed to orient himself. A small, emotional gesture, but I’ll never forget it. I also put a photo of his favorite fishing spot where he grew up in Harvey, Michigan, at a place I only knew as “the Bayou.” Dad caught a lot of little rock bass there. Oh, and a hell of a northern almost as long as he was at age ten or so.

Everyone called him Al, but his real name was Elmer Walter Ohman, died at 54 of congestive heart failure in 1948. He only had an eighth grade education, but he was a very smart man, and he wound up as a steel buyer for Packard Motors in Detroit. The family had a fine middle class house in an area I would now describe as tragic and extremely dangerous, off Six Mile and Gratiot. A good friend in Detroit drove me there in 2011, and he said, “We’re not stopping. I will drive by slow enough so you can take video, otherwise people will think we’re trying to buy drugs.”

Al made $10,000 a year back in the mid 1940s; his job included purchasing the steel for the P-51 Mustangs used very effectively during World War II.

Of course, I never met Al, or my grandmother, Mabel, who died the next year of leukemia. She had to go to work as a cafeteria lady at the YWCA, a job my Aunt Jean got for her. My dad was so sad for her, and he was only 18 when she died. She was 55.

Jean said Mabel, a Norwegian, had a delightful sense of humor, while Al, the Swede, was taciturn. He was a very handsome man, small at 5’6” and trim. He smoked three packs of unfiltered Camels per day, and my dad was convinced he probably only needed a coronary bypass, which my dad had at 69. No one had bypasses, statins, effective blood pressure medications, or wellness coaches in 1948. You just died young.

One time, a cousin of Dad’s, I think it was Marilyn, said after seeing him after decades (I have no idea why it was decades) that he laughed like Al.

Dad said, “My dad never laughed.”

My dad was a witty man in a way I never fully appreciated in life. When he died it finally dawned on me that he was wry, probably like Mabel, and he also could be taciturn, like Al.

My dad and Jean had a rather interesting Minnesota accent; I call it High WCCO Stentorian, with a lilt. Why a lilt? Well, if Al and Mabel didn’t want them to know something, Al would speak in Swedish, and Mabel would answer in Norwegian; a truly trilingual family. Oddly, my dad’s facility with any second language was, well, not his first skill.

I went out into the garage, which, today in blazing Sacramento (clocked in at 107 at 5:00 PM), was a convection oven. Why? My wife Mandy needed some staples, which I had completely forgotten to buy at…drum roll…Staples this morning.

I said, well, I know Dad has everything like that in his desk.

The thing is, I haven’t opened my Dad’s rolltop since I moved to Sacramento in 2013.

This was a mistake, I think. I should have driven back to Staples to get the damn Staples.

I opened the garage door to get some light, lifted up the rolltop, and SAS airline tickets from 25 years ago spilled onto the garage floor. I picked them up, and put them in a pile of other tickets and travel documents.

On the top of several brown folders was a security questionnaire Dad filled out for the U.S. Government from 1982. He was about to named Deputy Chief for Research for the U.S. Forest Service, and, my God, you’d think he was applying for Deputy Director of Plans for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Friends from 1949 were listed as references. His best man Dick Wettersten was one. David French, his PhD adviser from the University of Minnesota in 1961 was another. I have only ephemeral memories of both of them. His Army service (stellar) was recounted.

Dad got the job, of course. He always got the jobs he wanted, except for one, which was Deputy Chief for State and Private Forests, a job he loathed every waking moment of every day.

“A lot of the scientists weren’t all that bright,” he would mutter after an extraordinarily dry martini. Garrison Keillor once wrote, “What? Did you just think about the vermouth?”

I looked in the drawers for the staples.

No staples in the center drawer. There were pocketknives I didn’t recognize, but seeing two of his watches jolted me. I don’t know if I’ll sleep tonight, honestly. They weren’t fancy, either. Dad was not a fancy person. When he retired, and my mom had died at 56, he later married the legendary humorist Peg Bracken, who wrote the 1960 “I Hate To Cook Book”, who also became my tres amusing stepmother. Someday I will write about her here. Short version: she was a genius. Period.

Finally, there was his little worn stapler he had last used, I am sure, in the weeks before he died. I grabbed it.

There were two surveying tools, I think, and a protractor. Maybe one of the tools was a tree borer or something. I know he had two slide rules, one steel and one bamboo ( I know, right? Bamboo?). I used the bamboo slide rule. Great slipstick action. I was even in Johanna Junior High School’s Slide Rule Club.

This would not surprise anyone who knew me then. Chuck Joseph, I know you’re out there, my wonderful brave friend now living in Israel, and I think you were in Slide Rule Club, too. If not, I apologize for dragging you down with me.

Another drawer revealed several years worth of U.S. Bank receipts. More travel documents.

No staples.

I couldn’t find the Dymo Labelmaker (red, of course), and I still have a thing or two around with my dad’s red labels on them.

JOHN H. OHMAN

1465 SKILES LANE

ARDEN HILLS, MN 55112

Interestingly, an ex-girlfriend’s cousin Bob bought our house. I saw a letter to her mother in 1979 with the return address of 1465 Skiles Lane, and it was a major WTBy Golly (this is Minnesota, folks) moment.

I kept slowly pulling out each drawer. Pens. Paper clips. The usual desk detritus.

Then, a box of staples. I handed them to my wife.

“Here’s the staples Dad gave you.”

Thanks, Dad. Now I don’t have to go to Staples tomorrow.

Dad was always prepared, always.

“Jesus Christ, you put soap on the screw before you drill,” or, “Judas Priest, the adjustment on your scope is all off by a factor of four.” He even had his army canteen and used it on hunting trips, and I even used it as an adult when I fly fished.

Now I appreciate his routine blandishments about my sloth and/or being a “dumb Swede”.

I miss them.

Yes, soap on a screw is totally the way to go.

And you never have enough staples.

Dad? Thanks for the column idea. I didn’t want to write about the election today, which would horrify you.